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That Sunday Feeling

It is very comforting that the Sopranos is back for another season of 13 episodes. Sunday nights have that certain familiar feel to them, knowing one can watch the comings, goings, and who-knows-what of those denizens of New Jersey. I also get a kick out of recognizing many of the locations, which are not to far from where I live across the state line here in NY. Am I the only viewer who is troubled by the changing of the actress playing the FBI undercover woman? The one who played the role last year is a familiar face, a familiar "New York character actress." Was it Debbie Mazer, an actress reportedly the best friend of Madonna? No, that's not right.

Well, I did a little digging (actually, a lot of digging) and came up with this: FBI agent Deborah Ciccerone looked like a completely different person.

"An HBO spokeswoman confirmed the role of Ciccerone, previously played by Fairuza Balk (she also appeared in the first season), has been taken up by actress Lola Glaudini."
That, from a report in the Philadelphia Daily news which further notes that scenes with Balik from the last episode of Season Three were reshot, with Glaudini in the role.

Wow! This is more CIA-like than Soprano-esque.

Maybe the beautiful Fairuza Balk was given an offer she couldn't refuse.

The contest remains a viable opportunity! Check it out. Cast your entry into the pool. Do it today, don't delay.

Look at this picture and then e-mail your witty caption to the judging department.

MONOPOLY MONEY

For many years of my life I was a consultant in the Radio industry. I owned a radio station for a few years, and worked in almost every aspect of the business: marketing, programming, ratings analysis, sales, station valuation --- with one exception: engineering. If you could get a shock from it, I deferred to those braver and more daunting than I.

I worked in markets large and small. Lots of various client assignements in New York, the largest of all markets, and other majors, as well as mediums and even some of the teeniest ones in towns smaller than Mayberry. In fact, some of those clients reminded me of Barney and Andy.

The lobby and trade organization for Radio stations, the NAB, is a curious entity. It promotes itself as being for freedom of trade, restraint from government intervention, it is big on Deregulation, and always touts itself and the medium as being diverse and open to all sorts of competition.

Not anymore.

As though that is a shock, right!?

Reacting to new media, new tech, and, well, competition, the NAB has come out squarely on the side of the ANTI-SATELLITE broadcast (radio-style, anyway) providers.

Here's an article about this from the Radio column in Tuesday's New York Daily News. David Hinckley, by the way, does a very good job of reporting on the radio scene in New York, and offers discussion of items on the national landscape when they either effect New York, or if he seems to see the overall import of the story to regular readers of his column. Kudos to him, and to The News for maintaining this column.

According to the headline in the Hinckley column, the NAB has earmarked $250,000 toward a campaign to get the word out. What's the word? Maybe it could be damn, or malign, or condemn. The goal is to promote regular, over-the-air, licensed AM & FM stations, while making the satellite stations seem to be some sort of negative entity. Or, as Hinckley puts in in the article, "Owners of free over-the-air radio stations are planning a quarter-million-dollar swipe at the upstarts in satellite radio."

What's a quarter-million among friends? Oh...I guess the word was swipe. That sort of incorporates (or, in this case, should I say conglomerates?) damn, malign, and condemn.

This links to an NAB Press Release in which NAB President Eddie Fritts blasts the FCC for actually allowing a satellite broadcaster to use an innovative patent regarding a terrestrial repeater network. In English, that means the NAB is pissed off that a different kind of broadcaster can do something that NAB Radio members can't do, as a result of the limitations of their license(s).

Of course, if one of the NAB's powerful members, a big huge monolithic chain of hundreds of stations, had come up with this, the NAB might just be singing a different tune. The NAB always struck me as having a mandate to serve the membership, and if powerful members want something, the NAB fights for it. It is far from a majority rule system, though. Rather, it always seemed to me to be a highly political machine, operated by a small clique who move and groove on what effects their particular stations' or chains' fortunes.

Peculiar afternote: nowhere on the NAB site could I find the Press Release referred to in Hinckley's column. Maybe the NAB updates the web (that potential threat to their members) after-the-fact.

For a completely different take on broadcast lobbying, check out Reclaim The Media. Not too likely that anyone will mistake this group for the NAB, even if they, too, held their big annual convention during the same month in the same city!

Their Mission Statement is a good read. This may strike major players at the NAB as a terribly subordinate and leftist position. Peruse the statement. It is actually very tame, a minor slap at the conglomerates that have disenfranchised the "local" from local radio, and a call for community participation.

Here's an excerpt:

For the same reasons, we encourage noncommercial media, local media, and community involvement in media production and distribution. As essential tools for the sustenance of a democratic society, media must be accountable to the communities they serve, and must be open to public participation.

Radical? Is this what one would consider to be Leftist? Anti-business? Anti-establishment? No, actually it sounds quite similar to the basics of the original FCC Act of 34, in which the licensees of the frequencies were mandated to maintain public interest, contact, even the so-called Public File (drop in any Radio or TV station and ask to look at their Public File. Within minutes you will be facing the top-ranking management person in the facility at that moment, and possibly meet a lawyer shortly thereafter.), and to serve the public. The receptionist will be in shock, the Manager will be in fear, and the sense of contempt and paranoia might pervade the room. But all you are doing is looking at the PUBLIC FILE. Go ahead, Reclaim The Media!!

It seems only FAIR, in this discussion of the NAB, to point to this page for yet another view of the huge broadcasters' lobbying and trade association.